In videos and podcasts, Poilievre and Trudeau are eager to explain themselves - at length

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, the Liberal MP who made a name for himself as a back‐ bencher with his own voice, posted a nineminute video to YouTube this week about the federal government's carbon pric‐ ing policy.

It would be an exaggera‐ tion to say the video is set‐ ting the internet on fire. As of Friday afternoon, it had a grand total of 329 views. But it's enough to say that Er‐ skine-Smith has contributed to the hottest new trend in Canadian politics: talking at length, and in some detail, online.

Videos like Erskine-Smith's weren't completely unheard of before now - the Liberals, for instance, released a seven-and-a-half minute video about their economic vision in 2014. And longwindedness in politics is hardly a new phenomenon. But Erskine-Smith's video fol‐ lows the 15-minute video on housing that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre posted in December - a video that seemed like a novelty at the time.

The Liberals responded to Poilievre's video with a threeminute video of their own. Poilievre's Conservatives have since posted an eightminute video about plastics and a 13-minute video about corporate concentration, and Poilievre has narrated two videos about public debt that each run more than 15 min‐ utes.

Poilievre's fondness for data and number-heavy videos filled with charts and graphs and references to news reports seems to follow from a central theory of polit‐ ical communication he articu‐ lated several years ago. He's a politician who loves a snap‐ py slogan (especially if it rhymes) but he also loves facts.

"All of us in politics these days make the mistake of fo‐ cusing too much on getting the right lines. We say, well, we've got to have the right message," he told me in an interview in 2014. "Actually, what people want are the right facts."

The sheer volume of num‐ bers in Poilievre's presenta‐ tions also seems to be part of his appeal.

When the Toronto Star's Stephanie Levitz attended a Conservative rally near Ot‐ tawa in March, she reported back that several in atten‐ dance said they "love how he peppers speeches with spe‐ cific facts - not just political platitudes." These voters trusted him because, as one told Levitz, "he does his homework."

Poilievre's fondness for numbers also creates an ad‐ ded burden for whoever he is debating - and it distin‐ guishes him from a Liberal government that does not excel at specifics.

Trudeau's Liberals may be adept at summarizing the values they uphold and the ideas they're trying to realize, but explaining what they've done or why they did it has never been their strong suit (with some notable excep‐ tions, such as Trudeau's ap‐ pearance before the Emer‐ gencies Act commission in 2022).

The complicated math behind one fact

No matter how many facts a

politician seems to have at hand, it's still necessary to ask whether those facts are being described fairly and whether they add up to the story the politician is trying to tell. Whether Canada is faced with a looming debt crisis is, for instance, at least debat‐ able.

In his latest video on pub‐ lic debt, Poilievre looks at the large deficits run by the fed‐ eral government during the pandemic, but then says that "even during the Covid crisis, much of the Trudeau govern‐ ment's spending had nothing to do with the crisis and therefore cannot be blamed on Covid alone." (That com‐ ment plays over a clip of what appears to be someone using the ArriveCan app.)

He then points viewers to report released by the par‐ liamentary budget officer in 2022 - specifically the PBO's conclusion that 35.5 per cent of new spending added to the fiscal framework since

athe start of the pandemic was not related to Covid. Poilievre then points to the size of the deficit in 20202021.

But the PBO's analysis covers a time period that runs beyond the pandemic it starts with fiscal year 20192020 and ends with 20262027. And a chart at page 10 of the report shows that the vast majority of the "nonCovid" spending was ex‐ pected to occur from 20222023 to 2026-2027.

During the fiscal years 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, when the pandemic was at its peak and the governmen‐ t's deficits were highest, Cov‐ id-related spending accoun‐ ted for 85 per cent of all new spending. In 2020-2021, when the federal deficit hit $328 billion, Covid-related spending was $261.8 billion. Poilievre might still dis‐ agree with the federal gov‐ ernment's spending deci‐ sions, but it's fair to ask whether the PBO's numbers back up the claim that "much" of the spending "dur‐ ing" the pandemic was not related to the pandemic. (Poilievre's office did not re‐ spond to an email asking about his claim and the PBO's numbers.)

Still, given how much these videos focus on com‐ plaints about government spending, they might be viewed as candid statements on Poilievre's political world‐ view.

Does the public want more than 10-word an‐ swers?

A cynic might view explainer videos as just another way for politicians to promote their visions and set the agenda, without having to deal with the input of jour‐ nalists. In a splintered media environment, there might be even more room to do so.

But these videos might be addressing a real public ap‐ petite for depth, explanation and understanding - the same sort of desire that has, in part, driven the rise of podcasts. When Pew sur‐ veyed Americans about their podcast habits in 2022, 55 per cent of respondents said a "major reason" for listening was "to learn" - the second most-cited reason.

So it's worth noting that while the Conservatives are rolling out video explainers, the prime minister is on a podcast tour. In the past week, Trudeau has appeared on Today, Explained by Vox, the Freakonomics podcast and The Big Story. (He ap‐ peared on CBC's Frontburner last fall.) Each of the resulting interviews has run about a half hour in length.

At the end of Trudeau's appearance on The Big Story, host Jordan Heath-Rawlings had the bright idea to simply ask the prime minister why he was doing these inter‐ views. Trudeau replied that his favourite kind of inter‐ view involves sitting down with a radio host for 15 or 20 minutes and having a "real conversation."

Podcasts, Trudeau said, represent the kind of "thoughtful conversation that most Canadians end up hav‐ ing in their daily lives with their friends, their co-work‐ ers, their family about big is‐ sues."

Trudeau said he wanted to get past the soundbites that tend to drive the political discussion. He invoked both former Calgary mayor Na‐ heed Nenshi and his desire for "politics in full sentences" and fictional president Jed Bartlet's quip about ten-word answers.

Of course, all the podcast interviews he can do be‐ tween now and October 2025 might not be enough to change the polls. And even long answers can be lacking.

But if Canada's political leaders want to explain themselves at greater length and in greater detail, it would seem churlish to complain. Even if it's still important to check their math.